Basketball: Phil Scrubb's ridiculous tournament

Phil Scrubb, according to last season's awards as well as our rankings, is the best player in CIS. He's the best player on the best team in the country, and has guided his team to national titles in each of his first two seasons.

But holy crap, he might be even better than anyone thought.

At this past weekend's Guy Vetrie Memorial Tournament in Victoria, the third-year guard led the Ravens to a three convincing wins (including a 78-65 dismissal of last year's championship game opponents Alberta) on the way to posting some borderline-unfair numbers. Here's what Scrubb did:

That's absolutely wild. For some context, Scrubb had a 73.0 TS% last year, so it's not totally unexpected for him to do that over three games. Or is it? I'm not sure. With the way Scrubb is besting his already ridiculous 2011-12 numbers (38.6 PER, 143.3 Offensive Rating) against some decent preseason opponents, I'm beginning to question whether we're really here and if the Earth is round.

Scrubb is like some kind of robo-point guard. He pushes the ball, gets in the paint, doesn't turn it over, gets to the line and can shoot from anywhere. And it's not like he's always looking to score, either: Carleton is loaded with shooters again this year despite the loss of Elliot Thompson and Willy Manigat, and thanks to Scrubb's drive-and-dish abilities they've been able to go bombs away. Carleton shot 33 threes against Lethbridge, 22 against Victoria and 34 against Alberta (the other team this piece was also supposed to be about, before the Ravens did what they do and made themselves the only story). Oh, and they made 41.6% of them. Eek.

It's early, and there are some promising challengers in the OUA to give the Ravens a run. But it looks like the best player on the best team—one that simply dominated their opponents, virtually every time they stepped on the court last year—is just getting better.